Born in 1914, she was a 16-year-old witness to this December 1930 fire. Some oily rags tossed into a closet by a janitor spontaneously combusted in the middle of the night, swallowing up the building. An important state safe was rescued by a middle-of-the-night heroine. No deaths occurred, since state workers were home snoozing when the fire ignited:
Several years later, she witnessed the construction of the new North Dakota capitol, and several years beyond that, her oldest daughter met her future husband while working there. In 1999, two of her great-grandkids played basketball at a park at the base of that new capitol, dubbed “The Skyscraper of the Prairie.”
Today, we celebrated her 95th birthday. That’s a lot of years of life.
Congratulations, Grandma. We love you!
Wow…95 years! Happy Birthday to her!